Hell and Silence
by Blondie B. Happy
Summary: Percy and Annabeth: they're inseparable, inimitable, and irreplaceable. As long as they're together, nothing can go wrong. But what if they lost to the enemy once, and that meant certain death? What if that meant they were banished to the Underworld for all eternity? And what if… only Annabeth made it to Elysium? AU, Dark, Rated T/M.
1. Chapter 1: Accepting Fate

**Well, some of my regular readers may be asking this question: "Um, didn't you say this story was going to be about Nico and Bianca?" Yes it was… but then I got this crazy idea in class, and this story was born. **

**The story will be OOC, have Typos, and my own little twist on the previous things that have happened in the series, because it's my fanfiction and I can do that kind of stuff. If you don't like, go write you own. **

**Enjoy!**

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Annabeth POV

The only thing that I was certain of was that I was dead.

I didn't know how long, I didn't know exactly why, and I was not completely sure of where I was. That's because the world around me was a startling gray color. When I stared at my body, I was translucent in the mist.

It's sort of like being on a rollercoaster of emotions and death. I felt as if I should be angry, or crying, or something other than the blankness that had become me. Something really hurt, too, in my chest.

Then, it all came back to me in an instant. A thousand memories of my life, of who I was. I was Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, head architect of Olympus, and girlfriend of the one and only Percy Jackson. I had blonde hair and gray eyes. I'd never failed a test, fought with a bronze knife, and ran away from home when I was seven.

But when I tried to think back to the time of death… there was nothing. I had no idea what had happened and if anyone else had died alongside me. Perhaps I was killed in my sleep, or during a fight. I wouldn't know until I remembered.

What happened to Percy?

It hit me like a bullet. I was never going to see him again. I wasn't sure why, but I started to cry in the swirling mist, because Percy wasn't with me. It was completely selfish of me to think something like that. It's as if I wanted him to die, which was not true at all. I just needed him with me. I felt... naked and bare without him.

Good gods, I really was dead. I took a shaky breath and found out that air wasn't even needed, since I was already dead. I poked my arm and expected my fingers to go right through. Instead, they did in fact touch my arm, like it really was there. I could feel my flesh, and I could see through it.

If anything had been in my stomach, I would've hurled. But I was empty, and I had a feeling I was going to stay like that for a while. I had a weird premonition that I wasn't going to get to be eating another Big Mac or a bag of chips. Even my bronze knife that I usually had was gone, leaving me defenseless.

The mist circled my body in odd patterns, like a noose fitting around a convict's neck. I swallowed hard and took a step back, and I hit my back against a hard wall.

I almost jumped out of my own skin. I ran away from it and faced it. It was brick and said DOA RECORDING STUDIOS, and I remembered, years ago when I was twelve, that I had been there, with Percy and Grover.

NO SOLICITING. NO LOITERING. NO LIVING. Pfft… no problem now. I was pretty sure that I hadn't died in a bathtub this time around.

I hooked my arm through the glass doors handle with no problem. I pulled it open and found it surprisingly heavy, or maybe I was just abnormally weak. And when I walked inside, and actually smiled, because of the flood of memories that came back into my mind.

It hadn't changed a bit. Now that the mist had gone away, I saw that the rest of the room was indeed gray. Not much of a change. There was a potted cactus in one corner, and the two leather, black couches were on opposites sides of the room, packed full of bored, scared humans that clearly had no idea what had happened to them.

The large, raised podium was still in the center, and Charon sat there playing on an iPad. He still looked the same. He had dark brown skin and bleached hair, and he wore an expensive Italian suit. His eyes were as black as midnight.

He didn't even looked at me as I approached. He seemed to be playing some sort of app, and judging by the sounds that I heard, I guessed it was Angry Birds or something along those lines. I cleared my throat and tapped my foot, waiting for him to see me.

He didn't, so I slammed my hand against the polished wood. He didn't jump, but looked down at me casually. That's when his eyes got wide. "Didn't you die in a bathtub, maybe four or five years ago?" he asked in a British accent with pure disbelief. Of course, he knew that I hadn't died in a bathtub. Back then, our improvising hadn't been that great. But still, he was shocked nonetheless.

Some of the people in the waiting room perked up, confused. Clearly Charon wasn't shocked that often. I shrugged my shoulders. "Didn't you and every other Greek figure supposedly disappear over two thousand years ago?"

He wiped the look off of his face with record speed. His eyes narrowed and he glared down at me. "I don't appreciate your smart attitude, Annabeth Chase." Clearly, he remembered me.

"Well, I don't appreciate being dead, but that's not going to help me in my situation, now is it?" I shot at him. We stared at each other with a sudden, burning rage. But eventually, after however much time passed, he rolled his eyes.

"So, who killed you?" he asked, scrolling through something on his iPad.

I cocked my head. "And why would you assume that someone killed me?"

He gave me this look like I was the biggest idiot in the world. He pointed down at my chest. "I don't suppose you did that to yourself, now did you lad? It must've hurt?"

Hurt? What was he talking about?

Self-consciously, I folded my arms over my chest, and felt that burning pain again. With wide eyes, I examined my see-through hand and found it stained with actually blood, deep red and dripping off of my fingers and onto the perfect tile floor.

My chest literally had a hole through it, and when I poked it, more just dripped out. It hurt like crazy. "Um, I'm not sure," I stuttered. "I can't remember what really happened."

He frowned like it was unacceptable, and then said, "So, where's the money? You need to pay or I'm afraid you won't be able to pass on."

I didn't want to pass on, but I certainly didn't want to stay in the waiting room forever. My bloody hand fumbled with my torn jeans and I reached inside of my pocket, searching for some sort of money. Anything. When my hand came out, all that was in my palm was some lint. I was totally broke.

Anger suddenly surged through me. It wasn't like people knew when they were going to die, and if they did, how would they know to keep money with them? "I don't have anything," I started off slowly, and then Charon cut me off with a wave of his hand.

"Take a seat then, Ms. Chase, and hope someone with back-pack full's of cash decides to come in and help you out. Or hope that one day I might feel sympathetic." He returned to his game, and in my anger, I flipped him off.

He didn't take notice to it, so I walked back over to the couches. There wasn't one open space and I was left standing for a few minutes, staring at my feet and feeling like an idiot. I didn't even have a penny on me. I was totally screwed.

Before I even knew it, Charon was off of the podium. He clapped his hands together. "Okay, listen up, worthless souls. If you've paid, follow me. You'll be going to the Underworld now. If you haven't stay here, and don't think about sneaking away with the others, because it'll never work and Cerberus will just eat you. No one wants to end that way… unless, of course, you end up going to the Fields of Punishment. You'd want to be eaten rather than go through that kind of torture." He chuckled like it was funny.

I watched as people all around me slowly stood up, looking relieved. I wondered how long they had been waiting here, and how long I would have to. I heard the soft shuffling of feet, and a little girl crying. "Shut that girl up before I through her down!" he threatened.

There was subtle shushing and the little girl finally quieted down. My heart went out to her, filled with sympathy. I watched as the group walked over to the elevator and stepped inside. Charon shouted, "Oi! Give me some room." Someone grunted in pain, and it wasn't Charon.

The doors closed and I listened to the sound of the cables bringing the people down to where they would never come back. It lasted for about half a minute, and then I could hear no more.

So I sat down on the now open couch and watched the people around me. There was a guy, perhaps fifty years old, who wouldn't stop coughing and grabbing at his chest. He was dressed in night clothes, so maybe he had passed on in his sleep.

There was an elderly lady with curly white hair and gum disease. She was tapping her foot and bobbing her head as if she were listening to the nonexistent music. She had on a pink skirt that went down to her ankles and a puffy blue jacket. She probably died of old age

The only other person that was left was a thirty year old homeless man, who wore practically nothing. He had a scraggly beard and was flipping through a Cosmopolitan magazine. He… I wasn't sure how he died. His little clothes were sort of bloodied, but I doubted that he had been stabbed or shot like me.

After that, there was nothing to do but… well, wait.

I had no idea how much time passed. The clock ticked on and on and on… eventually Charon returned from the Underworld and didn't say a word to us as he checked his Facebook and played the Logos Quiz. Sometimes he asked us to help him answer the question, but he remained silent.

Sometimes, new people came in. Some of them had money and paid him, and some of them didn't and were like me. We never spoke to each other, just studied and tried to ignore. I sort of felt like I was alive. I didn't fall through anything but I didn't have to eat, or use the restroom, or sleep. It was like existing but existing for nothing.

And then, after so much time had passed that it could've been years (though I knew it was only a few hours or days), someone interesting walked through the glass doors and took away by breath.

It was the one and only Percy Jackson, looking hopelessly confused.

I hadn't even realized that I had jumped out of my chair and sprinted towards him. He was so out of place that I was sure he had not realized it either. I could feel the multiple pairs of eyes on me and I wrapped my arms around him and pressed my lips to his in a heart stopping, mind blowing kiss.

I kept my eyes opened and stared at him. His green orbs got huge with shock, but then he crushed me to him, sighing deeply. And for a few moments we weren't dead and we were together, back at Camp Half-Blood, at the bottom of the lake kissing for the first time.

Wait… Percy was dead. No…

I jerked away from him. "Oh gods, what happened to you? How did you die?"

He shook his head. "I can't remember. Everything is so blank, and I can't believe that I am back here, and that you're here. Why are you here?"

"You mean you don't know how I died?" I asked incredulously.

"Not at all," he said, threading his fingers through my blonde hair. He poked my chest lightly. "I suppose it has something to do with that, though. The last thing I remember is going to sleep, maybe a week ago, and you were alive then. But the last few days are just gone."

I stepped away from him and studied his body. He was still lithe and muscular, with that funny Seaweed Brain smile and tousled black hair. He wore his orange Camp Half-Blood shirt and dark jeans, and he looked perfectly healthy and totally alive.

Except for the fact that I could see through him and the giant gash in his stomach, still giving off blood that had gone onto me. Percy looked down to see what I was staring at and yelped. "Ah! So that's what happened. Someone tried to gut me like a fish!"

I nodded slowly. "You're dead Percy, and so am I." I'd accepted I but it was still hard to believe it, especially since neither of us remembered how we had died. It seemed more like a twisted dream.

"Well, then let's get this over with." He pressed a coin into my hand, and I glanced at the golden drachma that glinted in the pristine light of the studio.

"How did you know you were to need this?" I asked him as he tossed his own coin in the air.

"Not sure," he admitted. "When I woke up, I was in this gray mist, and then the DOA was in front of me after a while. I had reached into my pocket, looking for Riptide, which I don't have any more, and I found two coins in my pocket. It was like I had known I was going to die and that you were too."

So that was a little creepy. I guess that I had died before him. "Let's just go to Elysium now and get all of this over with." He winked at me and we walked over to Charon, who while we had been reuniting gotten a new group to go back down to the Underworld.

Percy and I tossed the coins at him. Without looking up, as if he had known they were coming, he caught them in his hand. "Well, Mr. Jackson. It's been a while since we have seen each other."

"Hiya, Charon!" Percy greeted, waving at him. I was amazed. He was dead but so accepting and happy about it, completely different from the rest of the people there. He laced his fingers through mine. "We'll just be going down with you if you don't mind."

"Be my guest," he said, pressing one of the buttons on the elevator and sliding his key card into a slot. We stepped inside and I looked at some of the other people, still inside at the waiting room. The people that had remained with me from before were all still there, and they stared at with pain-filled expressions.

A few newbies were there too, and I adverted my eyes before I could run back inside and save them all. The doors soon closed, and we began our descent into the Underworld, to where I would never return.

I was never going to see my friends again. I was never going to see my dad again. I was never going back to Olympus to finish reconstruction. I was never going back to my cabin, or back to Camp Half-Blood. I was going to stay in the Underworld forever.

The more we went down, the darker it got. It was like déjà vu. Soon, Percy and I were wearing gray hooded robes, and Charon was wearing a long black robe. His glasses were gone and showed empty eye sockets. I could see the bones inside of him.

Percy squeezed my hand and I squeezed back.

The floor started to sway, and we were moving forward rather than down. We weren't on an elevator anymore, but a wooden barge. The River Styx was below us, littered with trash and swirling with dark water. Percy winced beside me and turned away.

"I can't believe I ever took a bath in that," he whispered to me, and even though we had started to cross into the horrific hell, I couldn't help but laugh a little at him.

Stalactites hung from the ceiling, close to our head. The shore that was ever approaching glimmered with a greenish light that reminded me of poison. For some reason I started praying. I didn't want to be stuck in the Fields of Asphodel or the Fields of Punishment. I wanted to be with Percy in Elysium.

The ship stopped on the rocky shoreline. We disembarked with the other many spirits that all seemed to know what they were doing. I stopped for a second and turned around to look at Charon, on this ferry.

The ferry had already left, the fog had risen, and there was no way to get back to the world of the living.

After walking down the old dirt path, Percy and I found ourselves standing in the ATTENDANT ON DUTY line with tons of other people. Some of them may have been demigods, but I wasn't too sure.

Of course, less time would've passed if we had just gone through the EZ DEATH line, but Percy and I were pretty positive that we were going to be fine being judged in front of the three judges. The only one that we knew wouldn't lie us would be King Minos, but we were both willing to risk it is it meant staying together.

When we saw Cerberus, I had almost wanted to go up to him and pet him. He was actually a bit of a sweet heart once you got past the size and teeth. But when I had stepped toward him, he had crouched and growled at me, his three heads snapping. Clearly he hadn't remembered me at all, so I stayed clear.

It sort of depressed me, knowing that even Cerberus had forgotten about me, but Percy said, "It's okay. Maybe you can train him again someday in the future. After all, we have the rest of our lives here."

The line moved ever so slowly and I was afraid that we would never reach the Judgment Hall. No one really talked. Most just stared. Some people who were families cried together.

Skeleton soldiers patrolled the lines, walking up and down to make sure that we didn't try to escape. Whenever one came near us, we always turned away and tried to block them out.

Once, Percy and I heard a baby start crying up ahead. Something told me it was the little girl that I had seen before. I heard the clanking of bones and the sound of the butt of a gun hitting skin hard. The kid stopped crying quickly. I cringed at the repetitive sounds until Percy hugged me to his chest and whispered reassuring words in my ears.

The tented pavilion began to get closer, and a familiar banner read: JUDGMENTS FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION. Welcome Newly Deceased!

I knew that if we kept walking, we would soon reach Hades's Palace, as we had before, but there was nothing that the God of the Dead was going to do for us. He hated us already with a strong passion, and Percy even more than me. So we stayed in our line for hours as we approached the tent and waited to be judged.

Off a ways away from us, I could see the Fields of Punishment, where the poor, damned souls were tortured by the Furies for the rest of time. I shivered as I saw one of them being whipped over and over again, and I could hear the far off screams.

And then, I could see Elysium and the Isles of the Blest, which was the only paradise there. The sandy beaches and huge mansions looked amazing, and I found myself daydreaming about living in one of those homes with Percy.

My heart stopped- again- when we got to the front of the line. I should've been happy that it was over but I only felt dread. Inside the three judges would judge my fate for the rest of eternity.

"You!" barked the security ghoul at the door. I couldn't see within it. He was pointing me and I felt myself shy back a little, scared. "You're up. Get inside!"

I looked at Percy and gripped his hand tighter. That last thing I wanted to do was leave his side. He looked deep into my eyes and he shot a look at the ghoul. But then he pulled me toward him and crushed our bodies together.

As if we were completely alone, he kissed me until I was melting to the ground. He gripped my shoulder like he was never going to let me go again. I gripped his head and kept his lips on mine.

"You'll be fine," he whispered into my ear. "You'll be fine." But he sounded a little unsure of himself, and really worried.

"I don't want to leave you! What if I never see you again?" I cried at him, hating the tears that were suddenly coming out of my eyes. I wrapped my fingers into his robe. What if I never saw him again?

"That's enough!" yelled security, ripping me away from the man that I loved. "Get inside now." He pushed me towards the tent and I fought against him. The man then grabbed me and slapped me hard across the face. It stung and it stopped me for a second, but I continued to fight to get back to my Percy.

"We'll never be apart for long!" Percy yelled, and I think his voice was thick with tears. "I'll always come back to you! I'll see you on the other side!" And I wasn't sure if he said anything else, because then I was inside and all noise was cut off.

A crap load of guards pulled at my arms and pushed me into the center of the giant pavilion. Three people stood on pedestals, gazing down at me. I was folded onto my hands and knees. It felt like someone had torn something out of me.

Someone coughed. I looked up. King Minos glared at me. As did all of them. They all wore brown robes with the hoods pulled up, leaving their faces dark with shadows. The only way I knew it was the King was his eyes, that I could see. I could still remember them from years ago.

"Okay, so this is Annabeth Chase," one of them said. I guessed that he was Thomas Jefferson. He sat in the middle of the three. That would make the other one Shakespeare.

A video started to play on the wall behind them, and I was drawn to it. It went through my entire life. It showed me growing up with my dad, and then him remarrying my stepmom. It showed her mistreating me and then me running away when I was seven.

It showed me traveling with Thalia and Luke, then with Grover. It showed me growing up for a few years at Camp Half-Blood. It showed me admiring Luke who would later backstab us all. It showed me meeting Percy for the first time when we were twelve.

It went through all of our quests. It showed Percy and I having our first kiss. It showed the Titan War and then Percy and I becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. It showed Percy going missing and Jason, Leo, and Piper arriving. It showed the months that I stayed depressed, hoping and wishing that Percy was still alive.

It showed us journeying to the Roman camp, and then going on our quest to stop Gaea from rising. It showed the Roman and Greek war and the end of it. It showed us all happy and alive, together at last.

But then it showed something that I didn't remember at all from when I was alive, and I paid attention to it. It showed Percy and I surrounded by some type of enemy that I couldn't even make out. The rest of our camp was fighting the same thing, and they couldn't stop to see that there were about twelve of them around Percy and I, and we were fighting for our lives.

There wasn't a name for what they were. I'd never seen them before and I couldn't place them. They lunged at us and snapped at our limbs, and we fought hard for a while. Percy tried to use the ocean and some of his powers to help us.

And then, when I had my back turned to help Percy's side, one lunged at my blind spot. It's jaws went right through my back and to my chest, then clamped down on me and shook me until I was on the ground, screaming my head off and fighting to stay alive.

Percy turned around and saw me on the ground, and the look in his eyes made my heart break a thousand times. A horrible sound came out of him as he lunged for the monster that had been eating me, but it jumped up and turned on him. Percy wasn't ready enough.

The monster clamped down on his stomach and tore right through him. He used his sword and his strength to stab it, and the hairy beast fell to the ground and dissolved into ashes. With his remaining strength as he bled out, Percy managed to kill the remaining enemy.

Then he fell to my side, where I was struggling to breathe, and pressed his hands down on my chest. He tried to stop the blood flow, and while he did, the battle was slowly ending. The other campers gathered around us. One of them took Percy away from me to go care for him.

He tried to make it back to my side, but there was no use because I was already dead. The video was over.

I looked at the judges. They had been discussing the entire time. I heard their mumbles and arguments but I couldn't make out any of the words. I was crying a whole new set of tears, and when they cleared their throats again, I stopped.

"Annabeth Chase, the Court of the Dead has come to the conclusion that you died a hero. We deem you worthy to be taken to Elysium for the rest of eternity. Thank you for your services." They said all at the exact same time.

I was going to Elysium. I was actually going. I was going to live a happy existence there and maybe even get reborn. Maybe I would end up in the Isles of the Blest.

But none of that would matter. Not as long as I had Percy.

I was quickly ushered out of the pavilion and into a short line. The people were walking happily to the gates of Elysium, glad that they were okay, even talking to each other a little bit. They all seemed happy.

I turned back to the hall to where Percy was now being judged and hoped that he would be fine. I said a quick prayer to Hades and the judges that we would meet again in Elysium.

Percy, I will be there wating for you, I tried to call out with my mind, as a guard came and pushed me along the path.

And for some reason, I felt this sense of dread, and I wasn't sure why.

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**Review if you want me to continue!**

**-BBH**


	2. Chapter 2: Speak Only When Spoken To

**Thanks for the amazing reviews. I suppose I'll continue the story… I'm listening to Wild by Royal Teeth, and WOW! It's just amazing! Listen to it and you'll see what I mean!**

***Warning: Disturbing Material. No lemons or smut, but it will have blood and gore and torture and... Well, just read and find out***

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Percy POV

She was gone from my grasp now. Her- the one person that I loved above all others. The one person with blonde hair and calculating gray eyes, who was just as dead as I, Percy Jackson, was.

Her name was Annabeth Chase.

In those few seconds I had held her in my arms and made those promises, I was sure that my heart had split into a thousand little pieces. And now, my entire body ached like a part of me had been ripped off.

She was long gone now, probably off to Elysium. And no matter what happened, I would go back to her.

"You!" barked the security guard, eyeballing me with pure venom. He was already mad at me for holding up the line before. I faked innocence and looked at him. "You're up next!" he grabbed the side of my gray robe and tossed me inside of the pavilion.

I cringed at the place where my fate was to be judged. It would either be Asphodel, Elysium, or Punishment.

The three judges stood on their pedestals before me, high into the air. Wearing brown robes, their faces were covered so that I could only see their glinting eyes, sizing me up and reading my past. I wanted to shy away, but there was no place for me to hide. It was dark except for an abnormally yellow light, hanging from the ceiling.

I studied it for a minute and watched it sway back and forth in a slow, hypnotizing manner. When I looked back down at them, they were discussing quietly with one another. Only one of them was focused on me at the same time, and I already knew it was King Minos.

He already hated my guts from previous events. His eyes were narrowed like he wanted to strangle me or kill me again. Neither of those choices was gone. Actually, the fact that he was there was no good.

"Well, this is Perseus Jackson," one of them said slowly, also like he didn't like me. He had to be either Shakespeare or Thomas Jefferson, and since I couldn't decide, I just called him Shakespeare, because frankly, I wasn't the biggest fan of Shakespeare either. I'd always failed anything that had his name in it.

Once again, they started talking, and behind them on the opposite side of the tent, a video began to play, and right when I saw the first scene with a chubby, black haired baby, I knew it was about my life.

Moments of my life began to flash by. There was my mom and I living together when I was a little kid, and the countless days of me terrorizing the preschool teachers. They called my mom in on a number of occasions to tell them that I was troubled… if only they knew.

Then it had my mom marrying Gabe, and the horror of my abusive and disgusting childhood with him. It had me getting sent to numbers of different boarding and public and prep schools, and flunking or getting expelled from every one of them.

Then it went on to Yancy Academy and my meeting Chiron and Grover. It showed the Fury Mrs. Dodds and me fighting the Minotaur. Then I met Annabeth and went on a quest with her and Grover to get back Zeus's stolen lightning bolt and prove that I wasn't the so-called Lightning Thief.

It went through my quest into the Sea of Monsters, and the one to save Artemis and Annabeth. It showed me on Annabeth's quest and our first kiss. Then it showed me almost dying after being blown out of a volcano and landing on Calypso's island.

It showed the Titan War and Annabeth and I getting thrown into the canoe lake at camp. It showed me going missing and the hours and days that I roamed the west coast, looking for Camp Jupiter. It showed me meeting my two good friends, Hazel and Frank, and our quest into Canada and Alaska.

It showed the reunion between Annabeth and I, and our quest into the Mediterranean. It showed us falling into the depths of Tartarus and barely surviving. It showed us fighting off Gaea and her army, and saving the Greeks and Romans from obliterating each other.

And then, it showed something that I didn't remember. The entire camp was in a full out battle with some type of monster that I knew even Annabeth wouldn't be able to place. I'd never seen it before, in real life or text book. It had large jaws, with rows of blooding-dripping teeth. They were furry and looked sort of like hellhounds, but with a face that was deranged and wild, worse than the beasts.

The video focused on Annabeth and I, fighting our own group of them. The majority of them had crowded around us, leaving us fighting for our lies. Annabeth turned to help my side, and as she did so, I cried out. Not the me on the screen, but the one watching it. Not because I was hurt, but as an unnecessary warning that wouldn't help anymore.

One of the monsters tore right through Annabeth, and I could only stare in horror. Then I lunged at it, screaming in rage. But it went after me instead and hit me in the stomach. I watched as all of my stomach was ripped and I bled fatally.

But somehow, that didn't stop me. I whirled on them all with Riptide, which I sadly didn't have any more. I killed them all as fast as I could and then fell to Annabeth's side, using my hands to stop the blood flow.

The other campers began to huddle around us, and some of the Apollo campers pulled me off of Annabeth. "Percy, you're hurt," they tried to tell me, softly. But I was crying and lunging at Annabeth, even though I knew she was dead.

Finally I just fell to the ground with defeat. Surprisingly, no one had died, excluding Annabeth, and there were only minor injuries besides my own. The Apollo campers yelled at them to give me and Annabeth space, but that only made them more anxious. When they saw Annabeth, the tears started pouring. Especially from her brothers and sisters. Chiron trotted over and his face was grim. I could've sworn the old centaur was crying, which wasn't surprising. Annabeth had been like a daughter to him.

They got me to the Big House while trying to give me nectar and ambrosia, but for some reason, my body was rejecting it. It wasn't helping my wounds, and even though they knew it, they kept trying. I was dying and they couldn't stop it.

They had me strapped to a table, and many of my friends swarmed in. I was muttering, "Annabeth, Annabeth." And I wouldn't stop. They tried dripping water onto the horrid wound, which usually helped me, but it didn't. They said incantations and rituals, and it didn't work either. The stitches for some reason wouldn't stay together. I was thrashing and ripping them apart.

So then, they just put a cool wash cloth on my head and waited beside me. I was unconscious from the blood loss. Some of the girls would take turns holding my hand and muttering little prayers. And for a few hours, they just watched me and still tried to save my life. But my death was slow and painful.

Then I was dead, and everything blanked out on the screen.

The judges were still talking, which I hadn't realized. My stomach still hurt where the hold in me was. It was crazy that I had actually lived that long, and not only did I long for Annabeth, but all of my demigod friends, my mother, step dad, Blackjack, and Tyson. Oh no… what had happened to my mother?

I couldn't take it. I stood to my feet and screamed. It was loud and ear-piercing and totally heartbroken.

When I looked back down from the swaying light, the three judges were staring at me. I blushed and back up a few steps. Spreading my hands in a wide gesture, I asked, "So, and my fate is?"

The one I hadn't heard from yet, probably Jefferson, scoffed without humor. He shook his head and muttered something illegible, not in English or Ancient Greek. I was pretty sure it wasn't a compliment.

"Perseus Jackson," they all started at the same time, like it was rehearsed. "The Court of the Dead has come to the conclusion that you died a menace to yourself and those around you. We deem you unworthy of Elysium and Asphodel, and you will be sent immediately to Punishment for the rest of eternity."

I nodded slowly, and then shook my head vigorously. Did they just… no they didn't. "Excuse me?" I asked incredulously. I couldn't have heard them right… Punishment?

This time, only Minos spoke, and he sounded gleeful. "You will make taken to Punishment, not Asphodel nor Elysium. So sorry Perseus… perhaps you should've tried to do better with your time alive." He shrugged.

No, no, NO! "How?" I screamed at them hysterically. "What did I do to deserve Punishment? You can't take there, you can't! How! Please, don't put me there! I'll do anything. There has to be some kind of mistake!"

One of them whistled, and two security ghouls trotted in and grabbed both of my arms, attempting to pull me out of the tent. But I was on an adrenaline rush, and I was mad. Angry. Not thinking clearly. I bellowed and ran straight at the podium and jumped to swing my fist at one of them. "This! Isn't! Fair!"

The ghouls pushed me to the ground and kicked me in the side, but I felt little pain. I shot back to my feet and screamed curses at them, the worst that I could think of. I felt around for my pocket, but I remember that robes didn't have pockets. And Riptide was gone anyway.

It tried to stop me again and I kicked it's gut and then used my momentum to hit the other one that was sneaking up behind me no so quietly. They both keeled over and grunted, and I spun on the judges. They just sat there, looking amused as they watched my fight. I wanted them to die. They deserved it. But they were already dead, so that wouldn't really work out.

They deserved Punishment, not me. I was a good person. I had always risked my life for others and was completely selfless. I was a hero and needed to go to Elysium. I had to be with Annabeth. I shrieked again at them and stormed up the stairs behind the podiums.

"WHY! WHY WOULD I GO THERE!?" I reeled my leg and arm back to swing at them and to possibly choke. I wasn't thinking clearly. I was on full battle and defense mode. But they just shook their heads and looked at me, then vanished into thin air.

I stood atop their velvet seats and scanned the area, but they were gone. What a coward! There was no way I was going to Punishment. There had to be a mistake. I shot down from the podium and ran for the exit. I could catch up with Annabeth and we could escape to Elysium. We had friends who were there, they could help us.

The ghouls had recovered. One of them punched me three times in the nose before I even had time to react. They weren't playing around anymore. I tried to make an offensive jab at them, but it caught my hand and twisted it to the point of breaking. I stifled a moaned and tried to use my feet to help me, but they were swiped out from underneath me. One of them did a fan kick that connected with the side of my head, and I went down.

I heard them talking to each other as I tried to wiggle from their grasp. They dragged me out of there and down the line, right to where I would spend all eternity.

There had to be a mistake. I didn't deserve Punishment.

Sand got into my robes and with the last of my strength, I screamed, "ANNABETH! I WILL COME BACK TO YOU!" as loud as I could. I could hear my voice echo through the miles and miles of Underworld, and I knew every spirit, good or bad, had faced me. And hopefully, she had heard me.

Annabeth,_ my love_, I'm so sorry… Something snapped inside of me, and I was gone…

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Elysium: a perfect state of happiness and peace. Heaven. Serenity. Shangri La.

I wasn't in any Elysium. I wasn't in the purgatory between life and death and happiness and sadness. There was nothing good about where I was, because I was in straight up hell. I was with the shrieks, the crazies, the psychopaths, and the villains. They had judged me and deemed me unworthy of Elysium and Asphodel, and banished me to… Punishment. Of all places, they said _Punishment!_

I hope you can see what's wrong with this picture too, and that I am not the only one.

When I woke up, it was to a whip at my bare back. My robe had been removed, along with my shirt, so that my chest was exposed and I was wearing my well-worn sneakers and jeans. I cried out and jerked awake, rolling over to see who or what had done it to me.

There was a hag above me, grinning wickedly. It could almost pass for one of the Furies, but I knew better. This hag had rotten teeth and rags for clothing. She only had one eyes and her gray hair was clumpy. It seemed like I could just push her over into a heap, but something told me that she was stronger than she looked. Especially since she had an array of knives around her waist and a whip in her hand.

"Up, up, terrible demigod," she cooed, nudging me with her foot. I could smell her dirt covered toenails. "I would hate to use this whip again on such a handsome young dead man."

"Go to hell," I whispered.

"Already there," she squeaked, and the whip came back down across my back. I bit into my hand and tried to ignore the sudden burning sensation that had spread throughout my limbs. A thousand curses stormed through my mind, but I decided against them. They weren't going to help.

Reluctantly, I stood to my shaking feet. I could feel the blood lining my back and creating a map of crosses. How was it even possible to bleed if I was dead and my heart had stopped pumping it? There was still sand on me, and my nose felt swollen from the punches of the guards.

I observed where I was. It appeared to be some large prison chamber. There were about twenty other men in there, all with their very own hag that resembled mine greatly. I remembered looking at Punishment from afar, multiple times actually, but I couldn't remember actually seeing a building. There had been, of course, tons of torture machines, but not once was there a building.

It was high and had random ropes hanging from the ceiling, like a gymnasium. The other men were already at military attention, obviously having gone through it before. The lights came from torches, and they weren't bright enough to help me make out the faces of the others.

The ground was hard like rocks. It was probably made from rock, no concrete. I could feel the rough texture of it, and how it was uneven, not spreading right across the ground. There were no beds or cots. There weren't any refreshments (not that I'd need them). It looked like a torture chamber.

"Where am I?" I asked the hag. "Who are you?"

"Why, you're in Punishment, of course," she cackled. I stared at her, and she nodded at me. "Well, I guess you know that. This is one of the high security parts of Punishment, made just for the worst that the world has to offer. It looks like you're one of them, cutie." She winked at me, and I swallowed my disgust. "As for my name… well, you won't need that."

She slapped the whip near my feet, forcing me to jump in the air. "Now, into position with the others. You'll soon see what your schedule and training will be like. After all, today is the beginning of the rest of your life!"

I gulped loudly and quickstepped into attention with the other men. There were no women. They all were wearing jeans and sneakers as I was, and no shirts. We were all sweating, and the men showed their fear. I tried to guess how long they had been there. For some, it may have been centuries, and yet they were still scared. That wasn't a good omen.

I straightened my back and blew my hair out of my eyes, then stiffened my arms to my sides. I tried to stare just ahead and clear my mind, but so much was happening that it was too hard.

Was I ever going to see Annabeth again? I doubted it, and my heart ached for her. Was I ever going to leave Punishment? Probably not. Had they gotten my sentence wrong? Who knows… I just wanted to know what had caused them to put me here.

I had always thought of myself as a hero. Fearless and brave. Loving and loyal. Of course, I had messed up a few times in my life, but nothing too bad. Nothing that should make me be tortured. At worst, it would've been Asphodel, but probably Elysium. I mean, I was the savior of Olympus.

And they had put me in a high security prison. I wasn't that much of a threat. Maybe it was because of my little freak out in the Judgment Pavilion, but I had a legit reason for that. I'd heard the phrase, "Life's not fair," a thousand times. It had never occurred to me that death wouldn't be fair either.

I heard the slicing through the air and the leather against my back before I felt anything. My body wet numb as I took in the fire. I exhaled loudly and felt one tear trace down the side of my face.

"Okay, listen up nuisances," one of the hags said. "We have a new one of you, and his name is Perseus Jackson, son of Poseidon." She sneered it in my face and walked up to me. She spit on my shoes and muttered something. It took all of my self control not to move.

"We expect all of you guys to help Jackson get to know how things work around here. Of course, only during your own off time. Which, might I add, you don't get that often."

"Once every week, or sometimes month, depending on how tired they are or their vacation hours," the guy next to me muttered, then snickered to himself. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, but couldn't make him out.

A hag whistled, and the guy grunted. I noticed someone kicking him in his knees, sending him to the ground with a heavy thud. He couldn't be that much older than me. Before I had realized what I was doing, I grabbed the hags arm and used my leverage to flip her to the ground. She totally had not expected it.

Everyone gaped at me, and I felt grudging pride in my gut. But that was short lived, because in a flash I found myself on the ground, my check being cut by the hard ground. The other man was next to me, shaking his head like we were both idiots.

"These two need to learn a lesson about talking out of turn. And fighting back against their superiors." The hags hissed at me, and I stared up to look at my fellow inmates. Their expressions were all similar- confusion? Pity? Both?

"Hm." The hags huddled in a group and started whispering with each other, planning my and the other guys fate. We couldn't do anything but lie there and try to listen. When they disbanded, one of them came up to use and hauled us to our feet. I was taken one way, and he was taken another.

The hag trailed her finger across my bloodied back and chest, her sharp fingernails creating scratch marks. "Since it's your first day, we'll cut you some slack. Maybe this will just teach you better. Remember, it is better to keep your mouth shut."

I shivered as I was led away into the dark shadows, into a corner that I had not known existed. The light didn't reach this part of the room and I was casted into perpetual darkness. But the hag seemed to know where she was going and she guided me with no difficulty.

Then she turned me around to that I was facing her. Her hands drifted from my chest to my chin, and I could smell her hot breath. I wanted to throw up. And then, she placed her calloused hands back on my chest and pushed me so hard that I stumbled back a few feet and my back hit a wall.

A strap was placed around both of my wrists and yanked tight until it felt as though my hand were going to fall off. The same was done to both of my ankles. I got super nervous, more nervous than I had felt any other time. Being tied to a wall was never a good sign, especially with someone who was stronger than you and in control.

Something cold trailed over my arm, and I gasped. It was a knife, sharpened for stabbing.

"That's the thing about you decayed souls that are left here to rot," she said softly, her voice like a whisper in the wind. The knife trailed up and down my body. I shook like a puppy. "We can do whatever we want to you, things that would normally kill people, and you will never die, because you are all already dead. Isn't it lovely?"

That's when the blade cut through my wrist, slicing the skin down to my bone. I hissed in pain and felt hot tears trail out of my closed eyes. My body fought against the bonds holding me, desperate to stop the flow and searing, but the bonds were too tight.

She laughed with ecstasy and sliced my other wrist, causing dual pain on both sides of my body. One vein popped, another one did too, and I could just tell that the hag lived for this kind of stuff. The knife only stopped digging when it got to my bone. She let it sit in there for a moment, and I could feel every contour and ridge of the blade. Then she yanked it out, causing my shrieks to begin.

If this was mercy, then I couldn't imagine what was happening to the other guy.

Hours passed, maybe even days, and the same thing went on. I convulsed under the pain and twisted to get away from it to no avail. Every effort was futile as it only encouraged her to keep cutting. Once, she dropped the knife, and I felt so relieved for a few seconds, but then she had her leather whip out again and continued to slap my chest with it. My face was scratched by her long fingernails, and my eyes was eventually swollen shut along with my nose.

"No more," I pleaded, hating every word that came out of my mouth. I was begging her. "Please, stop."

She tsked at me and her hair slapped me across my face. "Don't think for a second that I know why you're here, Jackson. I thought you worthy to go to Elysium too. But you were judged and told to go here. It is my job to keep these people in line, and I will do it."

So she sliced me again and again, and I died ten thousand little deaths. This wasn't humane.

When she was done, she undid my straps, and I collapsed to the ground in fetal position, clutching my wounds tightly. She chuckled at my and sniffed up snot from how amused she was. I heard footsteps as she walked away and left me there. She knew that I was in no shape to even get up to escape.

That cold hard ground became my best friend. I hugged it for a long time and felt my wounds closing with rapid speed, faster than they normally would. It was like my entire dead shade was on a high of nectar.

I'd let my fear show. I'd let my weaknesses show. Those were two things you never did with the people that had control over you. I was done for. That had been mild. I didn't want to see harsh.

These people had gone through this every day for years and years. Maybe even millennia. No matter what they had done in their lives, they didn't deserve this. No one deserved this, and I really did not.

Days must've passed, because when I finally had enough strength and courage to wobble my way back into the main room, everyone was sitting on the ground, discussing their lives quietly with one another. The guy who had been punished along with me still wasn't back.

My legs could barely take myself forward, and I had to use the wall as support. When the other guys caught sight of me, they called me over quietly. "Hey, Poseidon kid, come join us."

"Wow, Perseus Jackson in Punishment," one of them sighed. "I never thought that this day would come." Other people mumbled in agreement and gave each other high fives. They sounded like a gang of people that I would see anywhere in New York, but these were the worst of the worst.

I stumbled forward and fell to my knees in front of them, moaning quietly. I could already see their smirks and wolfish grins, and that was just in my mind. They were all huge, some twice the size of me. They had scars and closing wounds and tattoos all over their bodies.

"In case you're wondering," one of them started slowly. "You've been out of commission for days. All of the hags are gone away to some meeting. I guess it's with Hades, but you never know."

I blinked and rubbed away the pain on my arms and legs. "Hades?" I asked cautiously. "I've met him before on… many occasions."

"Oh we know," one of them said, and the others shushed him. He rolled his eyes. "I mean, you're sort of a legend down here, having escaped the Underworld so many times, and having escaped Tartarus. You're like a celebrity, and now that you're dead… maybe they put you here because they thought you would be a threat."

"Me, a celebrity?" I laughed at that, but the sound caught in my throat and sounded like a croak. That last time I had laughed I had been with Annabeth in those few moments before we both had descended. "I'm not a celebrity, I'm an idiot."

"Yeah, well, you're both," one of them said, and they chuckled together. "No one speaks unless spoken to, and even then we try not to. We only talk when we are alone, which never happens."

"Anyway," I said, changing the subject, "Why would I be a threat? My salty water powers and horse-a-pathy don't really help me down here. My sword is gone now, and they just repeatedly slit my wrists for apparently days. I think I'm going to throw up, anyway."

"Well, please don't do it on me," one guy breathed, scooting away from me.

"You're kidding?" they all asked, incredulously. "That's all?"

"What do you mean, 'that's all'?" I inquired.

"Dude, you can't be serious." One of the guys sounded angry at me. "That's a nice treatment. At least it only lasts for days. Trying being buried in hot coals for a month, and once you come out, your entire body is a blister and you can't move. And when a hag asks you to go run a marathon and you say that you can't, they just hurt you even more. That's bad. Your punishment wasn't."

I heard that person stand up and walk away, feet thumping against the ground. That was bad… I hadn't realized how lenient they actually had been. My body started to hurt again and my wrists felt like they had been newly cut.

"Oh, don't mind him," they all started saying like it wasn't a big deal. "He's always like that. Rumor is that when he was alive, he killed a bunch of Jane Doe's, you know? But he was being sort of serious. We've all been through worse than that, and you will have to too."

"How come they keep everything so dim in here?" I asked suddenly. "I can't see a single thing, let alone any of you guys. I have no idea what you all look like."

"They keep it dim because it's better to not see what goes on in here. That how I like it anyway. The blindness and the silence… But it's not like you'll need to know our names or faces. We're just going to spend forever in here together." I heard them get up and walk away, probably to go rest.

"We'll talk to you again sometime, Perseus," one said. "Remember, don't speak out and keep quiet. It'll make everything run smoother and help not just you, but all of us."

"And if you're thinking that you'll ever get to Elysium, then think again, because you won't. We've all tried to escape before and it doesn't work. Save yourself the humility and the discomfort of it all and just stay here in hell." Then they were silent as if they were gone.

I stood up too, my legs suddenly stronger. I walked until I was against a wall and slowly fell down it until I was sitting on the ground. My eyes started to close before I even reached the bottom and I was floating through a dream like state in no time.

Death made no sense, and I still had no idea what I had done to deserve this. A part of me wanted to fight through every hag and make my way to Hades and hold him in a headlock until he gave up the information. But the smart part of me said that wasn't a good idea.

They were going to torture me forever, and yet I couldn't help but think about Elysium and the warm, sandy beaches that just screamed PARADISE and SERENITY. All of my friends were there and so was she… Annabeth…

I wanted to go back to her, but now, it seemed impossible.

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**Review to tell me what you think! Thanks again for reading this story. Hugs and Kisses and COOKIES to everyone! (::) (::) (::) **

**-BBH**


	3. Chapter 3: MAO-A

****As of 4/5/13: I rushed the put the previous Ch.3 chapter out, and I wasn't really happy with it, so I changed it and added on in places so that it'd be longer! Enjoy****

**Sorry for the wait, but the updates will be really irregular. I'll try to update more often though. I Hope You Enjoy! :) And please, please review! **

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Percy POV

When the hags weren't torturing us constantly, we sometimes had conversations.

"Did you know that there is actually a gene that can make you be more prone to violence in your life?"

I turned my head up and stared at him. It was pretty random. "For real? What's it called? Wait, let me guess; the demigod disease, 'cause I think I have it." It hurt to move my head because of all of the bruises around my neck. I liked to try to keep my eyes shut, but that never really happened.

"Does it have to do with ADHD or dyslexia?" asked one of the guys, who was tapping his foot and had been for the last few hours. He was about my height but with twice the muscles and scars. "I already have both of those."

Not many of the men here could agree with him other than me. Not all of the bad people were demigods, but they knew all about them. I guess spending so much time with them will make you less naïve than the common man walking through Asphodel.

"MAO-A," one of the guys told us. He was the evil genius with all of the brains, and he was a tiny, puny thing. Unlike the rest of us, he was small, but he was by far the smartest. "Also known as Monoanime Oxidase A. It's carried down through families and can make the person naturally want to kill someone or rip their head off. It's like a burst of adrenaline times ten."

I laughed and shook my head. The sound felt foreign within the walls of our prison, and my throat throbbed some from it. "That's helpful."

"I've suspected all of the gods and goddesses of Olympus have the gene, and only some of them are affected by it. Ares, for example, would most definitely have the gene. Your father, Poseidon, probably would too."

I nodded but said, "I'm not really a killer, though. I mean, I've killed monsters and Titans and Giants, but that's not really murder. That's self-defense, and I only did that when I had to."

All of the men started groaning and mumbling to one another. "Here he goes again," one whispered loud enough for me to just hear. "Begging for his innocence."

I was innocent, and I would keep saying that until I was let out of the prison. These men had all already told me what they had done to be put in there. Rape and killing and drug cartel and all of that stuff. What had I done? I had just saved the lives of all my friends on more than one occasion then happened to have died in one battle. I was innocent.

One of them clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to dislocate it. "Down here, man, we're all the same. We are equals and will be for the rest of eternity, however long that's supposed to be." He started whistling 'Let Freedom Ring' and everyone chuckled mirthlessly. Except for me.

I glared at my feet and twiddled my thumbs. The evil genius continued once everyone had quieted down a little.

"Anyway, not every murderer has the gene, and not every person who does have it will turn into one, but sometimes it's a bad thing for those crazy people. Maybe we all have it, especially you demigods, since you guys seem to be more prone to violence."

My fists clenched and my jaw tightened. The genius went on. "Yeah, you know Lizzie Borden? She had the gene, and look where it got her."

"Who's Lizzie Borden?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was crazy. With the light from the torches, I could make out his face a little. He was probably in his early thirties, but he had enough wrinkles on his face to be one of the hags. He had a lazy eye and squinted at everyone like he was supposed to be wearing glasses. He was one of the few who wore a shirt, and he looked sickly.

"She's… you seriously don't know?" I shook my head. "Well then… "

"I used to listen to them," one of the guys mused.

"Well, I'm not talking about the band, I'm talking about the person. Lizzie Borden, she was born in the nineteenth century and killed both of her parents with an axe. She chopped them up into little pieces while they were asleep. And then she died of pneumonia."

I knew my face was contorted without even having to look in mirror. "That's disgusting," I mumbled quietly and the people around me murmured in agreement. But the genius didn't look grossed out. He looked thoughtful and fascinated.

"Where do you think Lizzie Borden is now?" one of them asked.

Evil Genius smiled creepily. "I don't think. I know for a fact that Lizzie Borden is down here in the Underworld, in Punishment with the rest of us. She's at one of the other high security prisons, and all sharp objects are kept at safe distances from her."

I arched a brow. "How do you know that for sure?"

He winked at me. "It's just a hunch, but I'm usually right." But there was something else that he wasn't telling me and the others, and I could see it in him. It was like he had gone outside and actually met her.

Wait, what if he had gone outside?

Swallowing, I looked at him and asked, "Have you somehow been outside of here?"

He looked at me carefully and then laughed evilly. He spoke only loud enough for me to hear. "Not unless forced to go be tortured, no I haven't. But that doesn't mean that if I did, I would tell you." He winked again, and I knew that deep down, he wasn't telling the whole truth. A big part of me wanted to think that he was actually lying and really had escaped from these walls before, but I never knew what to believe in Punishment. Lying was a daily routine, but escape was not. It was impossible… but, was there a reason to believe that…

No. It was absurd and improbable. By now, Evil Genius had turned around and attempted to head off to the other side of the room, into the dark shadows and recesses. I jumped up and a hand on his shoulder. He stiffened and stopped, turning around slowly. "Yes, Percy Jackson?"

"What did this whole MAO-A thing have to do with anything?" I inquired.

The others perked up behind me and backed me up, which they rarely ever did. Genius shrugged and grinned. "No idea," he trailed off, and then backed up slowly, his eyes still trained on my own until he was just part of the shadows.

"Creepy little worm," the other demigod said, who'd just stopped tapping his foot for the first time in hours. He was pretty nice, or at least nicer than the rest of the people here. We still hadn't traded off names yet, which was okay, but the curiosity was eating away at my insides.

"I heard the hags talking about something like that a while ago," someone said. "Maybe that's what provoked him to talk about it."

They started discussing it, and I felt like throwing up at the mention of them. They were terrible and I even had nightmares about them. They still had that guy that had stood next to me so long ago. I hadn't seen him since the incident.

They'd let me off easy, and he was probably still being tortured. My stomach churned at the thought, and my legs just gave out from underneath me. Suddenly, I found myself staring at the ground and blinking, dizzy and nauseated.

"You okay over there, Perseus?" someone asked, and I could hear the smirk in his voice. It was the same guy that had gotten mad at me for thinking that my punishment was bad. He still hated my guts, and I tried to stay away from him, which was hard when you were both sentenced to the same building forever.

"I'm just fine," I said through gritted teeth, and eventually the stares turned away from me and they all continued their debate on why the hags had been talking about the MAO-A gene that they might be carrying.

I rubbed my ankle, which was still tender from the last bit or torture I had been given. I could still remember what had happened clearly in my mind as if it had just happened. It wasn't that new, but it hurt as if it was.

I had been standing in line with the others, back erect and lips shut like they had advised. Sweat was pouring down my ruined shade body, and I wanted to flee and runaway like a coward. They had been right in my face, observing every muscle, every contraction, every breath that we made. We didn't need to breathe anymore, but it made us feel more humane.

She'd been so close that I could've made out every pore and pimple. I could count the moles and see her hooked nose dripping snot. Her teeth snapped at me like a dog, and I was able to see the cavities on the few rotten teeth that remained sewn in mouth.

She had then grabbed my chin with her dirty, blood stained fingers and forced me to look her right in the eyes. My hands had itched to push her away, but I forced them to remain at my sides. Her eyes were a strange gold, glistening with power a reminding me that she was in control and I was more of a slave.

Then, out of pure luck, she'd backed away from me slowly, shaking her head in disgust. But it hardly mattered because she was out of my personal bubble, and I felt free of death with her gone.

The hag was on the guy next to me, and she had kept moving on, and once she was all the way on the other side of the line, I felt a hell of a lot better. Then she had finished, and she moved to stand in front of us, a few feet away.

"You all look to be in good health, which is good. It's not fun to torture someone so hurt that they won't remember any of the pain." She had laughed like she was the queen, which she sort of was.

It was abnormal for a hag to be alone with everyone. Sometimes I thought that we could just rebel against her and the others. After all, we were the worst of the worst. Couldn't we escape and just go to some other part of the Underworld? We could go to Tartarus… I'd been there before and survived.

But I would go straight to Hades and force him to tell me why I was in Punishment and not Asphodel or Elysium. And then, I was going to go to Elysium, and I was going to see Annabeth again. And the guys with me… well, they were strong enough as it was. They would be able to fend for themselves in the Underworld and keep the hags at bay.

And then she had left them, finally, and I had exhaled loudly with relief. That had been my big mistake.

Automatically, hands had grabbed me around the neck and squeezed, making me choke on saliva. I was thrown to the ground with one powerful swipe, and I had looked around at the others for help. They stared for a second, but then lowered their gazes to the ground and disbanded, leaving me alone with the torturer.

First, I had been kicked in the ribs, so hard that I could've sworn that I heard the snap of a rib. Then, she had reached down and grabbed me by the roots of my hair and yanked me back to my feet. I stood wobbly, only to be pushed against the wall to fall back on the ground.

I didn't remember the hag having a knife, but in the next second, she had an overly huge and sharp butcher knife in her hand. She ran her finger over the edge and grinned at me. "This may hurt a tad," she had said.

I remember the knife coming down on my ankle with a sickening sound. I remember the feeling of it slicing through the hard skin and the veins that had once pumped blood from my pumping heart. I remember the feeling of the bone splitting in half too, only with the first cut, and there had been so many that had followed.

I remember screaming and crying. I remember the pain.

It was short. She only cut for about thirty minutes before spitting on my body and leaving. The others still didn't come to my aid. Once I had had the nerve to look down at my ankle, I could see that it was almost completely severed from my body. It was only hanging on by a few pieces of skin on the left side.

For a while, I couldn't even move. I had just sat there with my head back and staring at the ceiling, trying to keep from hurling. The room was so silent that a pin could've dropped and everyone would've heard it.

Then I realized that we weren't alone. The hag was still in there. Her head only appeared in the deep black shadows, and as if I was in a horror movie, she began to sing softly.

"_One bright day in the middle of the night,_  
_Two dead boys got up to fight._  
_Back to back they faced each other,_  
_drew their swords and shot each other._  
_A deaf policeman heard the noise_  
_and ran to save the two dead boys._  
_And if you don't believe it's true,_  
_go ask the blind man, he saw it too."_

It was a nursery rhyme, one of the ones that little kids would sing but never understand until they heard it when they were older. I stared at her, gulping, and then she left us all, her feet echoing around us and vibrating off of the walls.

Since then, it had healed back together. We healed faster being dead, but the pain still remained. The scar was almost a complete circle around my foot, and when I stood, it felt awkward, like it was going to fall off. I tried to massage it, which was my own version of physical therapy, but it didn't work at all. The pain was going to stay for a long time.

I closed my eyes, my hand still on my ankle, and I was granted sleep, where I dreamt of Annabeth.

**. . .**

_My hands gripped the edge of the cliff, and I felt Annabeth underneath me. She was a deadweight, pulling the both of us down farther. I knew she didn't mean to, but it was so hard to keep the both of us from falling._

_I tried to pull her up, but it didn't work. I stared down at her gray eyes, and they were filled to the brim with tears that I wanted to kiss away. _

"_Percy, let me go. You can't pull me up." She was filled with defeat. She knew I couldn't pull her up, and I knew it too. I just… I'd already lost her once, and I wasn't going to lose her again. She had to stay with me. _

"_Never." I looked up and told Nico that I was going to meet him on the other side. He was so far up, and him and Hazel were trying to get help, but I knew it was never going to work. Annabeth and I were going to Tartarus._

_Then I looked back down at Annabeth. "We're staying together," I promised her. And I meant it with every inch of my body and soul. "You're not getting away from me. Never again." I gripped her hand tighter._

_I took her entire body in. Her clothes were ripped and covered in dust and grime. She had blood on her face and body, and a long cut down the side on her arm. There was a gash on her forehead. Her blonde hair was in tangle. Cobwebs trailed from her body and tugged us down farther, and somehow, she looked beautiful to me._

_And she nodded and said, "As long as we're together."_

_I looked at the sun for a second, high in the sky. I could only hope that our friends would be okay without us, and that Annabeth and I would survive the very long, fatal fall to Tartarus. _

_We might die down there. We might never return and stay there forever, but we would try to get back. And as long as we were together, anything was possible. We would defeat Gaea. We would return to Camp Half-Blood, and we would see our families again. _

_I squeezed her hand once. _

_And then we fell, holding hands, for a very, very long time._

_As the world around us got darker and the sun faded away, I suddenly wasn't falling at all, but my hand was still in Annabeth's. We were lying on a couch, which I remember to be in my old Poseidon Cabin. Her head was in the crook of my neck, and she seemed to almost be asleep. The feeling of her next to me was amazing, and I never wanted to leave my arms._

_Screw the rules. We were going to stay together in my cabin. Chiron would be mad if he found out, but we were demigods. The rules were stupid. _

_Annabeth moved a little and looked up at me. She smiled, showing off her bright, white teeth. Her blonde hair was in a sloppy bun and she had a bruise on her cheek from practice earlier. She set her hand on my chest and played around with the fabric. "Hi," she said quietly. Instead of saying it back, I bent my head and kissed her on the cheek, right over the bruise. _

_She laughed and wiggled around in my arms. "I should be getting back to the Athena cabin," she said softly. "Malcolm and the others will be looking for me if I don't come back soon."_

_That was true. It was well past curfew. We'd already had dinner and been to the campfire. "A few more minutes," I groaned, and threw her on top of me so that I was underneath her. She poked me in the ribs and I grinned back at her._

_Instead of letting her go like a normal boyfriend would do, I pulled her in for a long kiss that soon deepened into something hotter and quicker. She made no attempt to try and leave and it wasn't like I was in any rush. The worst thing that could happen now would be someone walking in on us, which would more embarrassing for them than for us._

_But Annabeth broke away. "I have to go. The harpies will be out soon, and I don't want to be caught by them."_

_We both stood up. "Can I at least walk you to your cabin?"_

_"If you want to risk getting caught, than be my guest." But something in her expression told me that she was grateful. _

_I laced my fingers through her and pressed a kiss to each knuckle. She blushed a bright red, which she didn't do often. She shook out her hair and I opened the door. I looked back and forth, searching for the wicked harpies and thinking swiftly of Ella, and her relationship with by half brother, Tyson. _

_We speed walked across the grounds, since her cabin was only on the other side, and she opened the door to hers. Right by the open doorway were at least three of her half siblings, arms crossed and brows raised in questioning. Annabeth was the head of her cabin, and being confronted like this was new for her._

_"Um, hey guys," we both said. One of her sisters shook her head. They didn't hate me, most of the time, but it wasn't like I was best buds with her family. The whole Athena vs. Poseidon thing still remained to this day. _

_"Well, you were out late..." Malcolm trailed off, his gaze switching from the both of us. "Do I even want to know what was going on?"_

_I laughed nervously, but Annabeth said, "No, you probably don't." And left it at that. His mouth dropped open. It wasn't like we had done anything, but I guess that was one way to get people to shut up. The entire population of the cabin was silent, and Annabeth smirked._

_Smiling, I cupped her cheek and gave her a soft kiss. It lasted for a few seconds and then just vanished as she pulled back. Her face was flushed. "Love you, Seaweed Brain."_

_"Love you, Wise Girl."_

**_. . ._**

I woke up with a start, shaking, and looked around me. I was still in the prison chamber and not in Tartarus, but that didn't matter. I wasn't with Annabeth. She had been that close in my dreams. I had been holding her hand, and we had been together. _As long as we're together_. That was what she had said, and now, we were not. She had been with me, and now she wasn't. Being awake was more of a nightmare than being asleep.

The people were still talking to each other, and I closed my eyes. I had never been much of eavesdropper, but you had to do what you had to do to learn things.

"It makes no sense why someone like Jackson would be down here with us," one of them was saying. "Maybe he is right. I never heard about him to anything bad. He was always the good person that everyone supposedly looked up to."

"I know. It's insane. Do you think the MAO-A gene got the best of him?"

"Do you think it really matters?"

I took a shaky breath and turned over loudly. They were talking about me. They stopped, sensing that I was awake, and kept quiet for a long time, but I stayed awake. So when they started talking again, I could still hear them.

"He's dangerous," one of the breathed out quietly. "I wouldn't be surprised if he busted himself out of here. Have you heard him talk in his sleep? He's always whispering that girl Annabeth Chase's name, like it's a lifeline. And isn't she in Elysium? He'd be crazy, but I think he's going to try and escape one of these days to go and see her. That's what it sounds like."

"I think he's smarter than that, even if he doesn't look it. He knows it would just make his existence a whole lot worse than it is already."

I'd been stuck in this prison for three months so far. I hadn't seen her in three months. I'd been in hell for three months.

Annabeth _was_ my lifeline, in a way. Even if I was already dead.

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****As of 4/5/13: Many people are also getting mad about how Percy's in Punishment. You'll just have to keep reading... (hint, hint, nudge, nudge.)****

**A review or two saying your thoughts and feedback would mean a lot. Do you guys want Percy's or Annabeth's POV next (It's random) Thanks for reading.**

**-BBH**


	4. Chapter 4: How To Save A Life

****As of 5/13/13. I don't know about you, but there's a glitch in FanFiction for me, so I just decided to repost this just in case!** Enjoy this new chapter!**

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Annabeth POV:

Only the Gods know how long it took before the Gates of Elysium were in front of me, and Percy still hadn't shown up.

Even as a ghost, my feet were sore and covered in blisters, and I was sweating through my long cloak. The gray had thick stains everywhere, on the front and back of me. The logical side of my mind said that it was utterly impossible that ghosts could sweat, because we were dead and our sweat glands shouldn't work anymore, but the other side didn't care. The long walk was at an end.

Soon I'd be able to shed the dreary robe and be at peace, like every person dreamed. No longer would I be in wars with other demigods and monsters. I had enemies, but they were being tortured after death, and I would never, ever have to see them again.

Paradise was coming and it was coming and it was here.

But Percy still wasn't. As I turned around to try and find him, he was absent. Dread washed through my bones and made that bubbly feeling disappear. He should've been here by now, so where...?

The few people that were near me sounded anxious and excited. Through the dark shadows I could just make out the wide smiles. There was a woman a few feet away from me, and she was crying so loudly that some of the guards were yelling at her to shut up, which only made her cry even harder.

After a few minutes of the continuous wailing, I couldn't help but go over to her because no one else was. She was shaking her head and her arms were wrapped around her waist. When I saw her more closely, I realized that she was probably around my age, only a teenager. Her brownish hair fell around her head in thick, curly knots, completely out of her hood. Her eyes were a startling green color, but not as beautiful as Percy's. She was short, too, and very petite. The sobs seemed to great for her to be to handle.

I set my hands on her shoulders and forced her to look me in the eye. "Are you okay?" I asked softly and nicely, trying to make sure that I didn't scare her. She seemed ready to fall apart. She shook her head viciously and her chest heaved. She started choking, and everything that I had ever learned from Camp was completely gone. I didn't know what to do.

"Oh gods…" I whispered, shaking her. She only seemed to start choking more. Her eyes bulged out of her head like a fish. If the situation had been different, it would've been comical, but it terrified me. She wasn't going to die from the choking, but that raised a whole line of new questions.

Did you just end up choking forever because death was no longer an option? I gulped, and looked at the guards, who were staring intently at us. The ghouls were intimidating, sure, but we were going to Elysium. We were the best of the best, the top of the top. They couldn't hurt us if they wanted to.

"Please help," I said, still trying to get the girl to stop. The tears streamed down her face still. The guards did nothing but watch. I understood that it was their job, but this girl was in so much pain. "Please," I begged, but they still didn't do anything. They were watching us like we were part of a show.

All at once the girl fell on the dirt path like she couldn't go any farther. And Elysium was so close to us. I could literally smell the barbecue and feel the hot waves of heat the warmed me to the bone. I knelt down next to the girl. "Come on," I whispered to her. "You can't give up now, not when we're so close."

She stopped choking, but when she spoke, her voice was thick with emotion and scratchy from the pain. "I've given up already. I gave up a long, long time ago."

The warmth was gone and replaced by icy fingertips that crept up my spine. Her words scared me. How could she have given up and still made it to Elysium? "But why? You are almost there. Elysium is paradise and heaven."

"That's only what they want you to think."

What?

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, my voice small.

"They only sent me to Elysium because they believed that my life had been bad enough and took pity upon me. I was bullied throughout my school years for getting good grades and never wearing the latest clothes and for not even having a cell phone. Some people teased me about where I lived. My apartment only had two bedrooms, and I had three other siblings. I grew up in a tough neighborhood."

I wasn't sure why she was telling me her whole life story, but by the way she gripped my arm, I could tell it was important. Yet I didn't see what this had to do with being judged for Elysium.

The guards had already walked off, obviously bored with what we were doing. Those few who came near us stared but passed by without another word. They were all too eager to reach their final destination.

"It never stopped. They were relentless. I hate bullies. I hate them because they never know what is going on in your personal life. The words they say can kill people." She let out a small cry, and her fingers dug into my skin. It hurt, but the look in her eyes was mad enough to kill. It was just rage, not at me, but at someone.

"My mom's boyfriend got drunk one night while she was at work. My sisters were home with me, and he just grabbed me. I wasn't sure what to do, and neither were they. He pushed me against the wall, and overpowered me. I screamed and screamed. I can't blame my sisters for not trying to save me, but they were just as terrified as I was. And when he was done, he just left me there on the ground, shaking and convulsing. And my mother never found out, but that's my fault."

I was gaping at the girl. She was so young, and to think that he mom's boyfriend had done that to her was sickening. I wanted to hug her, but I wasn't sure how she would feel about it. She seemed to sense my thoughts and shook her head.

"I got pregnant, and everyone thought that was the giant slut. My mom asked who the father was, but I never told her. She would've been ruined if she had found out that it was her boyfriend. He never touched me again after that. And eventually, I did have my baby. He was healthy and beautiful, and I love him so much. But I dropped out of school so that I could take care of him."

She rubbed her face. "I ended up killing myself and my son, John. I couldn't take it anymore. I was so selfish, but I couldn't stay with my mom anymore. Her pitiful looks became too much. Whenever I saw one of my old classmates, it was humiliating. And I couldn't bear to part with John. We died together when I crashed my car. In my suicide note, I asked my mom to play the song 'How to Save a Life' by the Fray at my funeral."

Before I could say another word, she started to sing softly. _"Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend? Somewhere along in the bitterness, and I would have stayed up with you all night, had I known how to save a life." _She wiped at her eyes and shook her head back and forth. "I'll never know if they played the song, but I like to hope that they did."

A single tear slid down her cheek, but she had stopped crying. "I had believed that death would be sanctuary, but it has proven to be a burden. Everything is unlike I thought it would be. Even this heaven, this Elysium that I am going to, is only a lie."

My stomach churned with a sudden fear. This cloud of feelings had stormed into my head over what she had done. I felt vulnerable and sick hearing about it. "What do you mean by that?"

"This place we're going to is no paradise. They took John away from me. They won't let me see him. He was in my arms the entire time until I was judged. Then he was ripped from my grasp. He was the one person that I still loved. I died so that I could be with him forever and so he wouldn't ever have to go through what I did. It was awful. I still am haunted by it."

She took a shaky breath… not that she needed it. "This system has been corrupted by someone. Everything is unfair. They are judging by personal opinions rather than the facts. John was everything for me, and without him I am nothing. I have no reason to live after death either. This heaven will be hell without him. This government is taking our loved one away from us. You must run away while you can, before they come after you, because they will. We are no match for them."

What was she talking about? "Why are you telling me these things?" I couldn't even believe her.

"I know the sacrifices I am making, and this time I think they are for the right cause. I thought killing myself and John would save him a terrible life like the one I had, but now he is gone from my grasp. I tell you these things so that you can carry on my legacy, because no one will remember me. But you stopped and bothered to help me. You will change all of this. You will lead us out of this lie and into the afterlife that we have dreamed about. You will judge those who've already been judged, and you will do so fairly. I can tell that you know how to love, and that matters."

Her words seemed so final and sad that my heart broke. This poor girl had given up everything, but none of this made sense. Why hadn't they let her baby John go with her?

"I don't even know your name," I said quietly, lamely.

And for some reason, that made her smile, but the smile was tight and controlled. "Names don't matter, but the actions of the people who have the names do. You, Annabeth Chase, will have your named remembered though. I am sure of it."

_How did she know my name?_

Out of nowhere, giant hands lifted her off the ground. She started to scream and scream and screamed. I scrambled backwards and onto my feet. "HEY!" I shouted. "Don't touch her! She did nothing wrong!"

The ghouls and skeletons were ignoring me like I wasn't even there. They started to hit her over and over again, and suddenly I felt like I was one of her sisters, watching her with her abusive father. Very human blood came from her nose. Apparently we still bled. I couldn't just stand there and watch them do that to her. I had nothing to fight with, but whatever.

There were two of them, one a skeleton and one a ghoul. I leapt on top of the skeleton, wrapping my arms and legs around it to try and bring it to the ground. I was unsuccessful, but I distracted it enough to loosen its slack on the girl. She fell on the ground, her hair clouding her face. She was breathing, "John." She yelped as the ghoul's foot came down on her. I think I heard something snapped.

The skeleton bucked me off, and I went sailing backwards. When my back hit the ground, bits o pain swept through me. When I looked back up, they were dragging the girl away, off towards Asphodel and Punishment. "We should've taken you here in the first place, you good for nothing slut," they hissed at her. "You skanky bitch." They spat in her face, and I lost it inside.

This was _so_ wrong.

And she cried for her son, but when our eyes met again, she motioned for me to keep moving. There was something in her expression that told me she had expected all of this to happen. After all, she said she had nothing to live or die for now that her son had been taken away from her.

I got up to go after her, this girl that I didn't know at all but I felt like I had known her my entire life. She was sobbing again, and the wails were so loud and echoed around in the Underworld. I stood there and then I lurched off of the path to go after her. Somehow, a new guard pushed me back onto the path and blocked my way to her. "Keep moving, or you'll end up like her."

Like Hell. I threw my fist up at the guard and nailed him right in the eye. He cursed and lunged for me, but I was fast enough to dodge out of the way and roll across the dirt. I jumped back up to my feet and chased after the poor, helpless girl. Another guard grabbed at my arm, but I maneuvered underneath him and kicked the back of his knees. He stumbled away, and I smiled inwardly. These guards needed training.

I sprinted forward towards the girl, calling for her. Her head popped up, and she smiled at me. _Go_, she mouthed quickly.

_No_, I mouthed back.

I heard the crack before I even felt it. Then I saw stars and my cheek burned like crazy. One of the guards had backhanded me so harder that I was seeing stars. I blinked at tried to move forward again, but the guard yanked me back by my hair. I cried out like a fool, and that seemed to encourage him. He dragged me back to the path, and out of nowhere, he drew a gun. He pointed it between my eyes. I couldn't die, but I was still scared of bullets. "I suggest you move," he chuckled, and then rammed his knee into my stomach. I almost fell down, and for some reason, it hurt so much that I could move. The guard backed up a few feet but kept the gun aimed on me. "Move."

I think there were tears in my eyes too. She was getting farther and farther away. I doubted that I would ever see her again. But I had to remember her. It was the least I could do if this was going to happen to her. And she was accepting it. She was accepting her new, horrible fate.

She could've gone to Elysium, but she didn't because of love.

Where was Percy?

I turned around to look back down the path, just for a second. But he still wasn't there. He wasn't anywhere. There was that bad feeling inside of me again. I couldn't stand it. The world, the dark underworld, started to pin around me. I was feeling lightheaded.

My eyes sought out the girl once more. Everything had gone wrong for her, but this was just terrible. Just because of what she had said she was no longer allowed to go to Elysium. Everything did seem corrupt. And the girl was gone. There was not a trace of her anywhere, not even a blood stain or tear. There was _nothing_.

That was too much for me. I dropped.

**. . .**

**.**

**. . .**

_I was running for my life in a sea of death. _

_There were corpses all around me, like zombies, trying to come after me and wanting me to be like them. I wanted to help them; the looks on their faces were enough to bring me to my knees. But I had to push through and I wasn't sure why. There was something telling me what to do, and instinct of sorts._

_It was much colder than I wanted it to be, even though there were fires everywhere. I was running around in the midst of an uprising that I had helped orchestrate. And by the gods was it ever so deadly._

_These tortured souls had finally had enough. They knew they were never going to be brought back to life, but in death they wanted to be treated fairly. They were never going to be able to see their beloved ones again. Some of them didn't even have memories of life before the Underworld, and yet they were still fighting to set things right._

_I wished I was that selfless that I could help them, but I had my own purposes for running through here._

_The guards of the Underworld's various sectors were doing their best to keep everyone in line, but it wasn't working out all that well. The riots were getting worse. Of course, they had all been through things like this before, and they had known that this was inevitable, but they hadn't known that this would be so bad. _

_If everyone wasn't already dead, they'd be like that in a second. Limbs were hacked off and blood was spraying in all different directions. The weird part was that the limbs started to grow back right after they were lost, and it looked painful. I guess that was part of being dead. _

_And these people looked like they wanted to die all over again, and stay in Charon's lobby without a coin to pay him. They would give anything to be anywhere else._

_Fear was in their eyes, but so was something else…_

_It looked like determination._

_I wondered what my face looked like. Scary, probably. There was a cut across my cheek that was dripping with blood. Someone kicked me in the face trying to struggle to their feet, and blood pooled in my mouth. I spit it out to the side and wiped my mouth, which only made it worse._

"_Please, help me," someone cried, and it sounded like a little boy, but I didn't stop to help._

_What does that say about me? I'm a selfish and terrible person._

_If I were a good person like Percy, I would've stopped and helped the kid. I would've made sure he was alright and get him to safety, regardless what was happening or who he was. He could've even been the enemy, and Percy would've taken pity on the kid. _

_Hades was missing. The Three Judges had been taken some place to be kept safe, but that wouldn't work out for long. These people wanted to kill them again, or at least hurt them so bad that they would be brought down to their level. _

_I was out to find someone that I hadn't seen in a very long time._

_My legs pumped back and forth underneath and the wind whistled through my lanky form as I ran around. He couldn't be that far away. I had to be getting closer to wherever he was. I wasn't short of breath anymore, since I didn't need to breathe, but my muscles ached. I'd been running for hours._

_I had to be getting closer._

_But then I did see him, standing in front of me. There was a long cut across his broad chest and he was reaching towards me. He was so far away but he was so close at the same time. I hadn't been this close to him in so long that my body actually needed, not wanted, to be closer._

_I took a step forward. So did he._

_I was crying now because it had been so long since I had seen him, and he was gorgeous even though he was hurt. The wind blew his black hair all around his head and even from afar I could see the familiar twinkle in his sea green eyes. I think I smiled at him. It looked like he smiled back at me, but it was pained._

_When I took another step towards him, he backed away. Something inside of me crumbled, especially when he turned his back to me._

_But everything pieced together as he began to walk away. This churning feeling started in my stomach, and I stopped crying as I watched him walk away. But one by one, many people around me gathered behind him, and soon I was part of the crowd._

_Percy couldn't leave with me. He was a leader, and he had to lead these people._

_After all, he was one of the people who'd started the war too._

**. . .**

**.**

**. . .**

I woke up with a scream that felt very out of place.

Actually, I just felt very out of place in general.

I sat up in sheets made of satin, warm and comfortable and not covered in blood. My body felt incredibly clean and I was wearing a white cotton robe. The pillows underneath my body were fluffy and I felt like I was on a bed of clouds and in heaven. Last I checked, I was in a battle.

No, that had been a dream, but it had been so weird. Why had we been fighting in some crazy battle? It had definitely had a purpose in the dream, but now, I could barely remember any of what had happened to me.

And before that dream, back when I had last been awake… I had been walking. Yes, I was walking down the path to Elysium, and then that girl had told me all of those things right before the guards had beat her and taken her away. That had to be the reason why I had such a bizarre dream.

That girl… oh no! No... It wasn't possible. Had that all been a dream too? I wanted to believe so, but I knew it wasn't.

She was gone and I hadn't been able to do anything about it. She was completely gone now, off to Asphodel or Punishment for all eternity, just for speaking to me about her theories. I blinked slowly, still trying to process everything that had happened.

I hadn't known the girl at all, but I still should've done more to try and save her. If I had been Percy, I would've done more.

And Percy, he still wasn't with me. He hadn't been walking with me. Where was he? I remember what the girl had said about the corruption and unfair judgment, but that was absurd. The gods know that Percy would be the first one to Elysium. Something must've happened on the way to Elysium, but he'd be okay. We'd be together soon enough, right?

I wasn't feeling too well.

I looked around at the room I was in for the first time. Everything was white, like I was in some sort of asylum. It was a pristine white that just couldn't be dampened by anything. Good gods, it was almost blinding. There was my bed in the room. It was huge, like a California King Bed. The carpet was white too, free of any stains. This was what Elysium looked like, and I was so, so alone.

Was I being punished by being in this room?

I got to my feet all too quickly. Black spots danced before my eyes, and I fell to the ground, grabbing my head. The headache that had started just hurt a lot. It was like someone was slamming my head into the wall over and over again.

I set my hands down on the ground to steady myself, and then I noticed how perfect my skin looked. There wasn't a single flaw or mark on it. Barely even a freckle. And my fingernails were scrubbed clean, free of blood and dirt. I felt awesome, besides the nausea. I felt so clean, and like I belonged in the white room.

I was starting to lose it.

I was going to be sick.

Jumping to my feet, I raced towards the nearest door, which happened to lead into a bathroom. That was a coincidence. I didn't see why I needed a bathroom, since I was dead and would never have to eat or drink anything, but in the back of my mind, I could remember the scent of cooking food. Maybe the souls here did get to eat and drink. My stomach felt empty as it had since I had died, but I was going to throw up.

I knelt beside the toilet and began to vomit in it, repeatedly. It just seemed to go on for hours, but once I was done, I felt like I needed to fall asleep all over again.

I sat backwards and sighed deeply. Now, the entire bathroom smelled terrible, so tried not to inhale anything. I used to wall to support me as I stood to me feet. There was a small window in the bathroom, so high up that I had to stand on my tiptoes to see out of it. I wasn't feeling perfect enough to do so, but looking somewhere else, anywhere else, other than this bathroom would be great.

I glanced out of it, and I lost my breath.

The world of Elysium, or wherever I was, gleamed outside, so bright that I was forced to squint. And even after the bright flashes had dulled, I still couldn't see right. The sun shined too brightly but with the most elegant beauty, like looking at a god. I could hear faint laughter, and sounds of happiness that I didn't feel. but when I backed up a few feet, they died off.

I fell back on the ground with a thud.

My headache was only getting worse, and I was still just so confused. There was no one near me. There wasn't the hum of electricity or the comforting sound of my brothers and sisters fighting in the other room. There was only me and this blinding white, super sterile tile that I sat on.

I'd never been more alone in my entire life… or death.

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**So, would anyone like a chapter somewhere in this story from Nico's POV? Leave reviews telling me your thoughts and feedback. **

**-BBH**


	5. Chapter 5: Hurts Like Heaven

**Sorry for the wait! I've been focused on other stories, but this one is still my favorite:) Hope you enjoy!**

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Percy POV

Annabeth.

_She was there._

_We were together._

_We were kissing._

_And that was all that mattered._

_In the beginning, I was all alone. I think I was in the jungle, or some sort of tropical place. Vines hung from trees and insects buzzed in my ears. Water dripped from the foliage above my head and landed on my face. Smiling, I leaned back and opened my mouth. The water was more refreshing than anything I'd ever had before. _

_I heard the far off sounds of animals running around, peacefully and harmoniously. The plants and trees were vibrant colors that I couldn't exactly place. It was like a rainbow in the ground all around me. I was in some sort of heaven, a Shangri La of sorts. I leaned my back against a tree and glanced down at my clothes. They weren't torn and bloody. They were spotless white._

_There was a puddle in the ground, and with the sunlight streaming through the branches, I could make out my reflection. There were no cuts, scraps, bruises, or scars. Not even a hint of blood ruined my skin. My hands were clear and not caked in dirt. My bones were all put into place. My face wasn't rearranged. I didn't feel like I was on fire or dying or even dead. I felt like I had just had nectar and took a long nap. It was like I could accomplish anything._

_I was in Elysium._

_Annabeth was here. Somewhere. I didn't know where, but I would find her no matter what. Our love was like a rope connecting us, and I would follow that rope until I found her. I wouldn't rest until I could feel her lips against mine again. I wanted to feel her in my arms with her hands on my neck. I wanted to bury my face in her beautiful blonde hair._

_I just wanted to see her face one more time. _

"_Annabeth!" I called out, my voice echoing. There was only silence following my call. I tried again. No reply._

_But I could feel her. She was close. She wasn't getting away from me this time._

_So I began to travel through this strange land of Elysium, wondering where she could be and wondering where all of the other dead souls were. Besides the creatures that I occasionally caught lurking around, I was alone. More alone than I had ever been before. An uneasy feeling settled in my stomach, like something bad was going to happen, but that was stupid. I was looking for Annabeth. _

_She was the love of my life. _

_Soon, the trees and thick plants made a curtain, and I pulled them away to find a huge clearing. It was a beautiful piece of natural scenery. The glass hills melted from the forest and into a giant lake with a waterfall coming down from a cliff above. A mist was cascading away from the water like fog. The sight took my breath away._

_The next thing that happened was the best. "Hey," said a voice. It was a girl's. It was familiar. The mist rolled onto the land and in the meadow stood Annabeth Chase, my girlfriend, as amazing as ever. _

_Her smile was huge. I found myself frozen where I stood, just taking her in. She was in perfect health too. She practically glowed. She was just as stunning as the sun in the white dress she wore, which fell to her knees. Her hair was down, around her shoulders, and I saw her knife strapped to her ankle. Her gray eyes were wide and wet with tears. I think I was going to cry too. Was that wrong?_

_But she started walking towards me. She was slow and took her time. I noticed that she was barefoot. _

_She wasn't flawless. No, there was a small bruise on the bridge of her foot, barely noticeable. It couldn't mean much, so I brushed the thought away. Maybe she'd just tripped and fallen down. The jungle was a bit of a safety hazard. I was surprised I wasn't covered in nicks. _

_She stopped when she was only a few inches away. We weren't touching, but I could feel her heart racing against mine. That wasn't right. Our hearts didn't beat anymore, since we were dead. I allowed myself to be confused for a few moments before turning all of my attention back to Annabeth. She was the only thing I wanted to be focused on._

_For a second, it was only us. The scenery that surrounded us faded into nothing, and we were standing in a white just as pure as that of our clothes. I looked all around me in awe, and Annabeth laughed. "Seaweed Brain, there's nothing there. It's just you and me. It's always been us against everyone. And we will fight to stay together. Neither of us are easy to give up. We're stubborn, but I believe that's a great quality. Percy, look at me. Look at me now."_

_So I looked down at her. Her smile was back, and I was in the sweetest form a hell ever._

_She stepped closer. Our bodies were flush in the white light. Her hand came up to caress my chin and then she grasped it lightly. Our toes touched. I could feel every curve of her body and I wanted to memorize it. "I have spent every minute of every hour of every day loving you, Percy Jackson." _

"_And I you, Annabeth Chase," I said. _

_Our lips met._

_It wasn't softly. It was rough and hard, like we were trying to swallow the other person. It was as if we were never going to let go. Our limbs tangled in the flurry of emotions. Though the kiss between us started off slow with a tang of passion, our lips moved faster and faster. Mine parted hers and I tasted her sweet mouth. It was a combination of honey and licorice that tasted wonderful mixed together. It was unique and it was Annabeth._

_My hands slid down to her waist and I lifted her up against me. Her legs wrapped around my hips and her hands tangled in my hair. I crushed her to me in a death grip, and if it hurt her, she didn't let on. Lust and love mixed together in our kisses and I never wanted this moment to end._

_With the white light around us getting brighter, my eyes slammed shut and I stumbled backwards farther than I realized. One minute Annabeth and I were on land, and the next we were tumbling through the air. _

_Fear flashed through me as she fell away, her mouth swollen and opened in surprise. I didn't want her to get away, but she was falling and so was I._

_I crashed, but it was into water._

_My laugh made air bubbles in the churning water. With the waterfall crashing into it, the lake wouldn't be calm even if I wanted it to be. And, it was deeper than I had suspected, and I didn't fight myself. I did not swim. Instead I sunk and let the water rush through me. I allowed myself to get wet. It felt amazing to be in the water. It was like home to me, and I relished in it._

_My eyes opened and I searched for Annabeth. She had fallen next to me. Her hair formed a halo around her head in the water as it floated up. There was a huge grin on her face, and I knew that she was thinking about our first real kiss as a couple, back at Camp Half-Blood._

_The memory was one of the best. It'd been the end of the Titan War and it'd been my birthday. I could still remember how I had felt when I had been trying to tell her how much she really meant to me. Things like that never came easy to me, and I had been a nervous wreck. Thankfully, she still loved me anyway, and the feeling of her kissing me was enough to make me believe I had died and gone to Elysium. _

_I guess the moment had been ruined when the entire camp decided to watch us. We'd broken apart only to be hoisted on people's shoulders and carried down to the canoe lake. We'd held hands up to the moment when they had dumped us in. _

_This time, I didn't need to make an air bubble, and Annabeth didn't need air. We only needed each other._

_We kissed in the water, and this time, it was definitely the best underwater kiss ever._

_Somehow we floated back up to the surface, clinging to each other, our clothes completely soaked. We never broke off the kiss, and I never wanted to. "I want you," Annabeth said against my mouth. "I want all of you. Do you want me?"_

"_Yes," I breathed back, my lips ghosting over her jaw line._

_My Annabeth shook her head and buried her face in the crook of my neck. I was confused for a second, but then I felt tears sliding down my skin. She was crying. I tried to cup her cheeks, but the best I got was running my fingers through her hair. "Why are you crying, Wise Girl?" I asked quietly. My legs moved back as I pulled us up to the lake's bank, setting her in my lap. Gentle waves lapped against our feet, and I noticed the bruise again. It seemed darker and more prominent. _

"_Because you don't love me," she answered in despair. _

_I was struck silent for a few moments. "Of course I love you. Annabeth, I will always love you. You know that."_

"_But you'll never love me for who I really am," she protested. That was crazy. I already loved her for who she was. I knew her. She had an obsession with books and knowledge, and she hated makeup and jewelry, unless it was her owl earrings. She'd ran away from home when she was seven and had found a family with Luke and Thalia. She had looked like a princess when I had first met her. We were best friends. We were battle buddies. We were demigods. We were lovers._

"_I do love you, for you, Annabeth."_

_Annabeth began reaching down for something, but I didn't care. I closed my eyes and breathed in her scent. I imagined us on the beach at Long Island Sound. _

"_Open your eyes and look at me, Perseus," she whispered._

_So I did. And screamed in shock, because this wasn't the Annabeth I knew._

_Her face was contorted and twisted up. Half of her lower jaw was gone and her teeth were missing. Her hair was clumped with blood, and lots of it was missing. It fell out without anything pulling it. Her gray eyes were bright with deadly anger. One eye was black. There was a long cut down the side of her face, and bruises ran into her hair line. _

_Her white dress was torn up and covered in dirt and slime. She was still sitting in my lap, so I could feel every crease and fold. Blood ran down her arms like the waterfall. That one bruise I had noticed on her foot was now on her shriveled legs, which were black and blue and purple. She laughed, and it sounded throaty and then it became high pitched, like a cackle. "You people are always the same."_

_I turned my head to look around her, and the water was now blood. Blood streamed from the waterfall and filled up the lake. Blood now lapped against my feet. Annabeth grasped my chin and made me look directly into her eyes, which were also bleeding now, like tears. "Any last words, son of Poseidon? Or will you go down with a fight?"_

_What did she mean? I couldn't fight Annabeth. Why would I even need to fight her? Was this even her?_

_She raised something high in the air, and I didn't know what it was until the sun gleamed red and made a reflection that blinded me. It was her knife that she'd had strapped to her ankle. I realized what she was going to do too late. The Annabeth I loved would never do anything like this. Who was this person?_

_The knife hit my chest and sliced through and stayed like that. My mouth opened and blood ran down my chin. So much blood, everywhere. She didn't take the knife out as she got off of my lap and kicked me to the ground. I blinked. I couldn't feel that much pain because I'd already felt so much. Perhaps I was just going into shock. I was already dead, but what would happen now?_

_When I looked at her face again, she was beautiful. She didn't look like one of the hags. She wasn't covered in blood. She looked just like the Annabeth I knew, except for the smile. The smile full of malice and victory. She giggled and walked away._

_That's when I listened for her footsteps because I couldn't turn my head. But there were none. In fact, there wasn't a single noise anywhere. The insects were silent. The animals were silent. The wind was silent and the plants were silent. Even the water, forever in motion, seemed to stand still and freeze so that it too was silent._

_There was only hell and silence._

_. . . . ._

_. . . ._

_. . ._

_. ._

_._

My throat was raw when my eyes snapped open.

For a second, I was positive that I couldn't breathe. I didn't need to, but the pain in my throat wouldn't go away. There was something stuck in my windpipe and I clawed at my neck. Finally, I began to cough, which meant that I wasn't going to have to go through the pain of choking but not being able to die.

Gasping, I slumped against the ground with heavy eyelids. The sounds of the other inmates sleeping filled my ears. At least I hadn't woken any of them up.

Rolling onto my side, I tried to grasp what had happened. The dream I'd had about Annabeth had felt so real. I could still smell her, taste her on the tip of my tongue, feel her hands on my skin. Everything had been perfect, like we'd been in our own sort of Elysium together.

But that had all gone horribly wrong. And then she'd stabbed me.

I shivered. The room was always cold, but now, it suddenly seemed colder. Goosebumps appeared on my skin and I wished briefly for a blanket, but it was stupid to wish for things because they never came true.

I'd stopped keeping track of how long Annabeth and I had been separated.

To me, it felt like years.

During the daily torture, I was left to think about things that had happened during my short lifetime. I contemplated why I had been casted into Punishment. Monsters didn't have souls. I'd been taught it was okay to kill them, but was there a limit? Had I killed too many or something?

When you stay in one place for so long, with no change at all, the lines between reality and dreams are hard to tell. Sometimes I dream of this prison that I am in and when I wake up I'm not sure that I ever fell asleep, or if I am still within a dream.

Even Tartarus was easier than this place. Call me selfish, but one of the reasons was because Annabeth had been there with me. Through those weeks that we had traveled the depths of Tartarus, she was the only thing that had kept me sane. With all of the monsters, and the constant danger that we had been in, it was a wonder how we'd ever made it out of there, but we had.

And now, without Annabeth, I had lost my mind.

With a sigh I got to my feet, and the other guys were talking near me. We all stopped when we heard the loud voice of one of the hags coming from some place.

"Oh look, another one, ready to be broken in," a hag cackled from some unseen area.

"And so pretty," another laughed.

A pretty guy? Okay then…

Our torturers came around to each of us and put us into chains along the wall so that we couldn't move. For a second, I tensed, because I was sure that they were getting ready to give us lashings for some unknown reason. None of us could go into attention like this, so tight to the wall, and we were all shooting each other confused looks. A new person was coming in.

There was going to be another person…

They made sure that there was no way for us to move before one of them called, "Alright, it's safe."

An unseen door opened up, and I gasped.

I could see the outside. Yes, all I saw were people being punished. I saw dead trees and fiery skies and burning fires, but it was the outside. If I could get out there, I could somehow find my way to Elysium, or back to Hades' Castle. It'd be tricky and a lot could go wrong, but if I was lucky, I could convince the court and even Hades maybe that I was innocent, and then Annabeth and I would be together.

The hags pushed someone inside, and my heart faltered, because it wasn't a guy.

They pushed in a girl around my age, maybe a little older, and the worst part was that I was positive that I knew her.

This couldn't be happening. Something was definitely corrupt. Because I knew this girl, and she had died, but she had been Elysium. She was supposed to be there.

She looked like she wanted to break down in tears. Her beautiful eyes were full of despair and her hair, which had always been glossy, was dully and falling out in clumps. There was a terrible scar diagonally across her face and she was wobbly on her legs. She was going to collapse at any moment. Her white dress was bloody.

It was as if she were a fallen angel.

How was this possible?

"Welcome to hell," a torturer hissed.

One of the hags kicked the back of her legs, and she went down on the hard ground, hitting it with a sickening crack that almost made me cringe. I did inwardly. She struggled onto her elbows, her eyes searching all of the faces until she saw me.

And when our eyes met, hers got wide with shock. Mine probably matched.

Because the girl in front of me was Silena Beauregard.

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**Uh oh... but isn't she supposed to be in Elysium? Sorry it's a little short! I hope it was okay. Reviews really are appreciated. **

**-BBH**


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